Denis Hatfield

Denis Hatfield (19**-) was a long time reviewer , arts critic, radio broadcaster, the author of a number of books on South African arts and culture and occasional publisher.

Born Denis Hatfield Bullough, he generally used the pseudonym Denis Hatfield.

He worked closely with a number of people in the arts world, most prominently with the artist, designer and author John Dronsfield in the 1940s. (See for example their joint publications[1])

In the 1940s he and his partner, the artist and designer John Dronsfield, kept a kind of open house for artists and worked closely together in the 1940s, particularly on Dronsfield's publications. He later became the life partner of actor and director Bill Curry, whom he first met when Curry was a young man just beginning in Cape Town theatre.

Contribution to South African theatre, film, media and performance

Publications

As publisher he was responsible for Non-Europeans Only : Thirty-six Drawings by John Dronsfield (Cape Town: Denis Bullough, 1942)

Among his own best known books on South African arts and cultural matters are:

The Work of John Dronsfield (Johannesburg: SA Architectural Record, 1944);

Satires and Verses by John Dronsfield, edited by Denis Hatfield Bullough (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1955)

Some South African Monuments Based on a series of talks broadcast by the English Service of Radio South Africa, it was edited by Hatfield and illustrated by E.A. Gundersen. (Cape Town/Johannesburg, Purnell:1967);

District Six, illustrated by Bruce Franck, with a text by George Manuel and Denis Hatfield (Cape Town, Longmans: 1967);

Cape Theatre in the 1940's: Reviews of Ballet and Drama (Cape Town/Johannesburg, Purnell: 1967).